Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/76

62 how you met. She gave me indeed a private message for him."

Rose faintly smiled. "A private one?"

"Oh, only to spare your modesty: a word to the effect that she answers for you."

"In what way?" Rose asked.

"Why, as the charmingest, cleverest, handsomest, in every way most wonderful wife that ever any man will have had."

"She is wound up!" Rose laughed. Then she said: "And all the while what does Nurse think?—I don't mean," she added with the same slight irony, "of whether I shall do for Dennis."

"Of Julia's condition? She wants Ramage to come back."

Rose thought a moment. "She's rather a goose, I think—she loses her head."

"So I've taken the liberty of telling her." Tony sat forward, his eyes on the floor, his elbows on his knees and his hands nervously rubbing each other. Presently he rose with a jerk. "What do you suppose she wants me to do?"

Rose tried to suppose. "Nurse wants you?"

"No—that ridiculous girl." Nodding back at